David Mehler

Across the Battlefield: A Pawn’s Journey, a review of a children’s book

A book that describes not just the rules of chess but also abstract concepts and basic strategy, while at the same time introducing a plot with about 10 named personalities in 48 pages, is asking a lot of a pre-adolescent reader.  In my opinion, it’s too much.

Jonathan Ferry’s Across the Battlefield, beautifully illustrated by Caroline Zina, is such a book. He takes an interesting game, gives pawns and pieces individual names and personalities, and creates a story about the development of Prunella the Pawn. That would be enough, but the book uses the story as a vehicle to describe the rules and strategy of chess. For many readers, especially early readers, the effort to remember characters and their traits will take precedence over the chess vocabulary and chess strategy the book describes.

A child could well be captivated by the pictures on each page. If read to second graders who had not been exposed to the game, the book could generate interest in learning to play. However, children are likely to be overwhelmed by the firehose of information about the rules, vocabulary, and strategy of the game.

In short, the excess ambition of Across the Battlefield works against its effectiveness in introducing chess concepts to its target audience of 6- to 10-year olds.

Across the Battlefield: A Pawn’s Journey, written by Jonathan Ferry and illustrated by Caroline Zina, is published by Chess Tales, LLC, of St. Louis, MO.

Postcards From The Bobby Fischer Center In Iceland

Fifty-one years ago this month, the chess match that changed the game forever began in Iceland, and since then that tiny island in the North Atlantic has been excited about the game. Iceland has had the most grandmasters per capita in the world since the 1970s and is unique in being the only country with more International Grandmasters (14) than International Masters (12).

In 2005, Iceland conferred citizenship on Bobby Fischer and sent a plane to retrieve him from Japan, where he was being held in custody at the demand of the United States. Fischer remained on the small island nation for the rest of his life.

After he passed away, a group of chess enthusiasts created the Bobby Fischer Center near his final resting place in Selfoss. The Center celebrates Fischer’s life and chess career with particular emphasis on his connection to Iceland.

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit. Its director, Aldís Sigfúsdóttir, is very knowledgeable and gave my wife and me a comprehensive tour. The museum emphasizes Fischer’s life in Iceland and has an excellent display of photos from the 1972 match. We also saw the Letters of Citizenship prepared by Iceland’s Parliament granting Fischer a method of exit from the Japanese jail where he had been held.

The 1972 match pitted the Soviet Empire, which had dominated high-level chess since the second world war, against a young American who eschewed assistance. Fischer knew the world champion, Boris Spassky, but had never beaten him over the board. He had lost three times while securing two draws in their previous matches. However, Fischer had gone on a record-setting run of victories leading up to the World Championship match, including winning 20 games in a row against players competing for the right to challenge for the world championship. Fischer’s international rating was 125 points higher than Spassky’s, a formidable difference.

The match attracted more attention than any previous chess match because of the international politics involved. Fischer made demands on the match organizers up until the games began, and for a while refused to travel to Iceland for the match. It took a series of efforts, including a call from the U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to implore Fischer to play the match and win for his country, to convince him to compete. By then, the match had been postponed for two days and the Soviet Union had to be persuaded to allow Spassky to compete after the insult of waiting for Fischer to arrive.

At last the match began, and the daily analysis of the games became the most-watched television in America. I had a personal stake in this, as it was in the run-up to the match that people asked me to teach them the game. It proved to be an avocation I would never relinquish.

The museum provides quite a bit of space to Boris Spassky, mainly about the 1972 match. It also covers their second match twenty years after the first, this time in the former Yugoslavia, which led to the indictment of Fischer for violating the U.S. embargo.

Despite their rivalry, the two World Champions became friends. The moving note of condolence that Spassky sent to be read at Fischer’s funeral in 2008 called Fischer his brother.

The Bobby Fischer Center also is used as a place to teach junior players. A substantial library of chess books is available for students to use, and there is space for about a dozen students at a time to play or receive lessons from volunteer grandmasters.

The Bobby Fischer Center is one of only three museums dedicated to World Chess Champions. (Emmanuel Lasker and Max Euwe are the other World Champions to have museums devoted to their memories.) Iceland is a fascinating and beautiful country, and chess players who travel there should make a point of visiting Selfoss, about 45 minutes outside Reykjavik on the Ring Road, and plan to spend an hour or two there.

Some thoughts on the recent tragedy during the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis

If a chess player is caught cheating, every notable accomplishment that follows is viewed with suspicion. The recent controversy during Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis serves as a reminder to our students that nothing good comes from dishonesty. If Hans Niemann had never been caught cheating before, his win over Magnus Carlsen would have been seen as a magnificent performance, perhaps a once-in-a lifetime accomplishment. That he has admitted cheating repeatedly in his young life, however, has caused this result to be viewed more skeptically.

Many prominent figures in the chess world have weighed in on the likelihood or lack thereof that Niemann broke any rules during the game in question.  This much is certain: in the third round of the annual elite Sinquefield Cup round-robin event, Niemann, the lowest-rated player in the tournament, defeated Carlsen, the long-time World Champion and highest-rated player.  The day after the loss, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament, the first time in his career he has pulled out in the middle of an elite event.  Carlsen’s only public explanation for the withdrawal was an enigmatic Twitter post that was viewed by many as a possible allegation that Niemann had received some form of outside assistance in the game the day before.

At the present moment, any evidence of foul play during that game is subjective and inconclusive.  What has truly amplified the contention is Niemann’s self-confessed history of cheating in online games, some as recently as three years ago.

Our experience shows that most people enjoy playing with strong players but nobody likes playing without confidence that the game will be played fairly. If players don’t follow the same rules, the game is no fun. Trash-talking diminishes the competition, as distracting or annoying an opponent is not supposed to be part of chess. Trying to get away with a touch-move violation, taking a move back, moving an opponent’s piece, or using a computer during a game, all are things that might tempt a player, but players of character resist those thoughts.

There is no game, and there is no tournament, so important that it is worth damaging your reputation or honor. Once either is lost it can take a long and miserable time to get it back.

Meet the Chess Center Team: David Mehler, Founder/President/Teacher

David MehlerThe seeds of my love of teaching were planted in college — not because I had inspirational professors, but through my experiences as a founder of the Pail & Shovel Party. (Google it. I was gone by the time the flamingos landed and the Statue of Liberty arrived, but was involved with the conceptual stage.) Pail & Shovel taught me that anything can be turned into entertainment, entertainment holds people’s attention, and through that attention, education takes place.

During the lead-up to the 1972 Fischer-Spassky match I first became a chess teacher. I was a decent player devoid of teaching experience but after a while found ways to impart the rules and strategy of the game to kids who quickly passed me in skill.

After college, I became a high school classroom teacher with classes in social studies and math. I was the fun teacher in a conservative Catholic school, but always had the goal of getting students to think. When struggling students came to me for additional help, I taught them to play chess and watched as their intellectual self-confidence rose. Inner-city teens who had heard throughout their lifetimes that they would not be able to succeed academically learned that was a lie. If they could play chess, they could do math and understand literature.

During my practice of law, I brought chess to underserved schools, working to convince small children that there was magic in the pieces of plastic they moved around the square board. As they assimilated abstract concepts, their smiles of understanding were more satisfying than favorable verdicts in courtrooms.

When then-World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov asked me to teach chess for a couple of weeks to children who lived in public housing, that was the start of something quite wonderful. The Washington Post editorial noting the value of chess garnered the attention of people who helped create what has become the U.S. Chess Center. I stopped taking new legal clients and never looked back.